1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to skates, and more particularly, to a skate having a boot and a runner attached to the sole of the boot.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Ice skates, and recently a dry land skate known typically under the trade-mark "Rollerblade," generally have a boot with a sole, a support for mounting the runner, and the runner, which in the former is an ice skate blade and in the latter a series of longitudinally aligned wheels. Other types of skates exist, such as roller skates, which are well known. There are different categories of ice skates, such as hockey skates, figure skates, and racing skates. Conventional figure skates do not have a runner support per se, but the blade, being thicker, is stamped in one piece and includes struts to be welded to a sole and heel plate, which in turn are connected to the sole of the boot.
The other skates mentioned above generally have a support structure separable from the runner. In the case of ice hockey skates, the support is made of molded plastics material with a kerf along the bottom edge for receiving the metal blade and a front and rear pedestal for attachment to the boot sole. Racing skates and some models of hockey skates have a support made of sheet metal formed into tubes with a separate blade secured by the support.
It has been known, at least in ice hockey skates, to adjust the contour of the ice contact edge of the blade to comply to the preferred location of the center of gravity of the player. For instance, the center of gravity of a player can be shifted forward or rearward by adjusting the angle of the edge of the blade relative to the axis of the player's body.
By reducing the angle, the center of gravity of the player is shifted forwardly. This can be done by grinding the skate blade so that the edge of the blade converges with the sole of the boot from the rear to the front of the skate. When a player wears the skate boot and stands on the blades which have been so ground, his body will tend to lean forward. If it is desired to shift the center of gravity rearwardly, the skate blade will be ground in the opposite direction, that is, to increase the angle and, therefore, make the edge of the blade converge with the sole of the boot, from the front to the rear of the skate.
In hockey, it has been found that a forward or "offense" player will want to have the angle of the blade reduced so as to shift the center of gravity forward. This is an important feature since the boots are anatomical, and the maximum limit that the ankle can flex for a player is roughly 40 to 45.degree.. By grinding or somehow changing the angle of the blade edge, this angle can be further reduced relative to the ice surface giving the "offense" player greater advantage when accelerating and enabling him to maintain a higher speed on the ice.
A "defense" player, on the other hand, must be able to skate back either by turning around 180.degree. or by skating in a rearward direction. The defense player in a hockey game will want to keep his center of gravity closer to the vertical axis. Thus, the defense player may wish to alter the angle of the blade so that it converges rearwardly or is at least flat, that is, parallel with the sole of the boot. In any event, it has been found that at least professional hockey players will grind their blades to suit the angle which is more natural to them.
There have been attempts to incorporate such a feature in ice skates, and reference is made to U.S. Pat. No. 4,139,209, issued Feb. 13, 1979 to Donald R. Humphreys. The Humphreys patent proposes the adjustment of the skate blade relative to the support. The skate blade in Humphreys is pivoted near the rear of the support within the kerf while adjustment screws are provided near the front of the support for varying the angle of the blade relative to the support. One of the disadvantages with this configuration is that there are only two structural contacts between the blade and the support or carrier in the vertical plane, that is, at the pivot and at the adjustment point near the front of the blade. Furthermore, as the blade is rotated counterclockwise, that is, to diverge in the front from the support, more and more of the blade is exposed reducing the lateral structural support of the carrier or support and the blade.
The purpose of the support or carrier is to provide, in the lateral direction, a structural triangular support for the blade, as shown in the drawings of the Humphreys patent. However, as the blade extends further downwardly from the support, that structural support rendered by the carrier is diminished. When the blade is retracted into the support, the side walls of the support can interfere with the blade in the sense that the lateral angle to which a player may expect to lean without having the blade lose contact with the ice will be reduced, which can cause the player to slip as the side wall of the support comes into contact with the ice surface.